This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art. This section provides a general summary of the disclosure, and is not a comprehensive disclosure of its full scope or all of its features.
There are approximately 23,000 non-fatal, football-related traumatic brain injuries that result in emergency room visits in the US annually. In hopes of reducing these numbers, USA Football's newest initiative for promoting the health and safety of developing football players is a program called Heads Up Football. A key component of this initiative is a protocol, Heads Up Tackling℠, which provides a step-by-step program to teach players proper tackling technique with a focus on reducing head contact and injuries. This program places significant emphasis on maintaining a spine angle of 45° and keeping the head and gaze up, thus shifting the point of contact from the head to the shoulders/chest during a tackle which reduces the likelihood of injury to the brain or spine.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for coaches to accurately and consistently visually monitor the spine and head posture of all their players during a practice or game. One potential solution could be to assess each player's form off the field by reviewing video, but this doesn't help to monitor player safety during a practice or game and provides no objective measurement of body posture. Moreover, the video images do not necessarily provide the quantitative measures of head and torso orientation and importantly the relative orientation of the head to the torso. While video analysis software (e.g. Dartfish) could be used for this need, doing so requires significant post-processing effort from an expert, rendering that method time-consuming and expensive.
According to the present teachings, an alternative technology for monitoring a player's or subject's head and torso posture during physical motion (e.g. play, practice, tackling, training, conditioning, rehabilitation) in real time is provided. This technology, a synchronized array of two or more highly miniaturized, wireless inertial measurement units (IMUs), provides direct measurement of linear acceleration and angular velocity. When secured to the head and torso of an athlete or other subject, data from these devices can be used to monitor the head and torso posture of all players or subjects, in real time, noninvasively on the field of play or other facility. Furthermore, the IMUs can be attached to the player or subject by using body-worn straps, or by directly attaching to or embedding in clothing or sports equipment. For instance, for the sport of football, one IMU may be embedded in a player's helmet secured to the head and a second IMU may be embedded in shoulder pads secured to the player's torso. In so doing, this technique will allow coaches to identify when a player is tackling correctly/incorrectly or otherwise using safe/unsafe technique, will help standardize instruction by augmenting the Heads Up Tackling℠ protocol, and will ensure that every player on the field is minimizing their chances of head and neck injury to themselves and others.
Further areas of applicability will become apparent from the description provided herein. The description and specific examples in this summary are intended for purposes of illustration only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present disclosure.
Corresponding reference numerals indicate corresponding parts throughout the several views of the drawings.